Page 17
izing whole streets and neighborhoods.36
Although there is widespread reluctance to acknowledge
it, there is an obvious link between personal responsibility
and behavior and the ability to move to a "better" neighbor-
hood. To buy a house--absent a rent subsidy--requires one
to be regularly employed, to save money, and to defer other
types of gratification. In that way, the poor can form
slightly less poor neighborhoods that represent higher rungs
on the housing and neighborhood ladders. Vouchers are
insensitive to that social dynamic, as has been HUD, both
historically and today. HUD officials continue to endorse,
for instance, the idea of using vouchers to disperse the
poor throughout suburban locales. They term this "demand-
side" rental assistance that empowers lower-income families
to seek housing in the metropolitan marketplace, notwith-
standing the fact that those households have not had to
engage in the sort of personal discipline that their neigh-
bors have relied upon to reach the same neighborhood.37
Such programs have also caused particular problems when
they have been used as a vehicle to foster racial integra-
tion. In his ill-fated Moving to Opportunity program,
former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros sought to use rent
subsidies to place low-income, inner-city residents in
middle-class suburbs. Cisneros believed that such a move
offered the best way for such residents to find better
neighborhoods and better public goods, such as schools for
their children. Not surprisingly, announcements of such
intentions (e.g., in Baltimore) caused widespread back-
lash.38 Such resistance is often glibly ascribed to the
alleged racism of lower-middle-class white communities who
are asked to host the lower-income black newcomers. But
working-class blacks are also vociferous in their opposition
to social engineering that places subsidized tenants, in-
cluding those on public assistance, in so-called mixed-
income buildings. The Chicago Housing Authority has faced
objections by black developers who assert that public hous-
ing tenants placed in mixed-income buildings have vandalized
the premises and alienated nonsubsidized neighbors through
their behavior.39 Thus, the gains and achievements of blue-
collar families who strive and save to attain improved